My Silly Life

I just got off the phone with my Dad. His mom has been in long-term care for several months now, and he and my aunts are holding a garage sale this weekend with much of what they had cleaned out of her apartment earlier this year. They are giving all of the grand-kids a chance to pick out things that they want to keep.

I can’t get home for the sale this weekend, so Dad called me this evening to describe the items in the sale. I had him put my name on a few things, but I have to say that I’m feeling a bit dirty.

Grandma’s not gone yet. She’s 96. She moved from her apartment to assisted living last year, and then to a long-term memory care place in April. She’s not going back to her apartment, and she doesn’t have much short-term memory. She can’t even remember if someone visited her 10 minutes ago. But she’s not gone yet.

I know she’s not going to get better. Her memory is gone. Her apartment is gone. She can’t take care of herself and she won’t be able to take care of herself again. Her things have just been sitting in storage for a couple of months. But I still can’t help feeling weird about rustling through her things and picking at the remains for a momento or two.

1 Comment

I felt the same way when my grandma died…my grandpa was still there, she’d been gone for about a day, and he wanted us to go through everything in the house and take what we wanted. 🙁 However, I do have to say that it doesn’t feel less icky when they really are gone.